


For Want Of A Nail

by MadAndy



Category: Zico Chain
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 06:43:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7256623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadAndy/pseuds/MadAndy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Such little things can change us forever—and we never know where our paths might lead us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Want Of A Nail

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Although this tale features characters that share an awful lot of characteristics with the individuals who go to make up the featured rock band, it isn't them. I'm fully aware of that fact; they're completely their own people, and this is a fantasy based on their stage personas, interviews and other material in the public domain. No malice or impeachment is intended to the band, their families, friends, management companies or anyone else involved with them in any way, shape or form. No money is being made from this tale, it's written purely for the enjoyment of the author...and her readers. 
> 
> It's fiction. Enjoy it as such.
> 
> OK, this is a weird little AU; ever since I heard Paul say that perhaps the boys wouldn't be quite such nice guys if they didn't have the creative outlet of their music I've wondered... and wondered, and thought about it, and the remembered the old advice: 
> 
> It's always the quiet ones you gotta watch. 
> 
> So what if they quit the band? What if they decided that it wasn't going to come to anything? 
> 
> What might happen?

****

_For Want Of A Nail._

Pale, soft fingers caressed the stem of the wineglass. _The condemned ate a hearty meal_ , he thought, and let a wry smile tug his his lips in a way he hadn’t felt for a very long time.

It was over. Finally, there was to be an end to it all.

*

“What happened to you, man?”

Salt and pepper beard. Perhaps a little shaggier around the edges; not shaved today, obviously. Streaks of grey along the temples, silvered curls to catch the light that slanted through the high, grimy window pane. Visiting time.

Paul shrugged. He didn’t meet his friend’s gaze, sure that the disappointment he would see there would hurt enough to kill him. Or perhaps not; perhaps it was just cowardice. Or habit.

He hadn’t looked anybody in the eye for a long time now.

“Just life, Toad...” he drawled. Polished disinterest, trail of his voice into the click-hiss of lighting a cigarette, twist of blue smoke into late afternoon sunshine and institutional dust. His fingers ached for the familiarity of a lighter, smooth plastic to twirl and mesmerise. A small act of prestidigitation to misdirect the gaze, a useful trick that was oh, such a small evil compared to other things.

The fists that slammed against the clear plastic screen startled him. Made him jump, cracked the self-imposed shell of cool, hard bitterness that he’d been presenting to the world. Got through to him, and he glanced up in surprise. Oli’s eyes snapped with anger, the face he’d watched oh, so many times relaxed and laughing now a mask of real anger. Cold fury. Out of character. But all things considered...

“Bullshit! You unbelievable _bastard_.” 

...perhaps not.

*

Not the music. That had stopped a long time ago; not the friendships, for they were gone too.

It had all seemed so logical, back in the day. The band was going nowhere, he and Oli both had jobs within the industry - Oli driving bands around in a series of scruffy, beat up vans, and he producing small time nothing kids - and Chris had been confident that he could make a go of music... somehow. Writing, performing, session work, anything. 

Back then, they’d still lived together. More than friends, close as blood, even if the death of their dream had made them a little less... understanding... of each other’s shortcomings. 

And then it had all begun to fall apart.

*

“Will you fucking shut up? It’s four in the fucking morning!”

Chris looked up, arched an eyebrow. Tempers had been a little frayed lately, true. But an outburst was most unexpected --

“Hey! Can you hear me? Shut! Up!”

He laid the pick aside, the faint click of it lost in the crash of Long’s door being flung open. Chris’ eyebrows rose, if that were possible, even higher; he’d shut the fuck up as requested, so what was the problem?

The angular figure swayed forward, shoulders hunched high and head held low. He leaned back, unnerved; the shadow that advanced reminded him of nothing so much as an angry dog. A really angry dog, that was about to do something really... unfriendly.

Placate the beast. 

But the raised hands, palms outward, and the spreading expression of worry did nothing to assuage the anger.

Paul felt nothing but anger, a low, bubbling red morass that blinded him. The music, the twine of notes from the strings that wound seductively around the flat--

Wrong. Bad. No more, enough, the dream was dead so why wouldn’t he just _let it die?_

“Hey man... take it easy....”

If you’d asked Chris, he would never, ever have believed he could ever be afraid of this friend. Yeah, he knew the passion that could rage in him; they all did, that was how the band had got started, for God’s sake. But this creature that stumbled across the concrete floor? Long arms that reached to pluck the guitar from his grasp, fling it across the room? The hissed breath, heavy with the stench of whiskey and anger?

Yeah, he was scared.

*

Paul watched Oli pace. He’d had enough of watching this sorry heap that had been his best friend, the bowed head with short-cropped brown hair in place of the long sweeps of black that he’d once been so familiar with. Such a wreck of a man would have been pitiful enough; that he’d once called such a man _brother_ made it so much worse. He slumped, sharpness of shoulderblades making a tent of the orange jumpsuit over the razored spine and Oli had stood, begun to measure the room with restless energy.

“I mean, I hear about this shit and come tearing over here - jesus, man, why? How? Fuck. You couldn’t-- but you did, didn’t you?”

He risked a glance, and this time he did groan; he didn’t know what he’d expected when his attorney had told him his old mate was coming to visit, but it wasn’t this. He was looking at himn as though he was an animal, something savage and dangerous. Something not... quite... human.

“Oli.... mate....”

A finger shakes in the air, and he can feel that old sense of desperation stir in his gut. It can’t happen again, not like this, not now. He’s already lost so much.

“I’m not your mate. Not any more, Paul.”

_Please don’t say that._

Too late. 

_And then there was one._

*

Another cold room, he remembered. It had been icy outside when he’d got the call, his mobile shrilling an unfamiliar tone. When he’d checked the screen he’d been surprised; what with one thing and another, he didn’t speak to the boys much these days. Everybody said it was such a shame, but they’d all moved on. They were different people now.

They _were_ different people.

Not happy people, it had to be said. He was getting thoroughly sick of producing no-hoper bands and it showed; he was still making a living - just - but the calls from the studio were becoming more sparse. He had a temper, they said, and he’d scared a few kids in his time. He was drinking, but nothing he couldn’t control; in actual fact, he was just thinking it might be time to head across the pond, take up a few offers that had been made. 

Leave this dead cold place behind for good. Dead dreams and dust.

Then the phone had rung, and it was Oli.

*

“What the fuck?”

A nurse cocked an eye at the interruption; the tall man that had burst through into the quiet of the ward’s waiting room was not what the upset group of people clustered there needed. He was scruffy, black hair hanging in his eyes and with his clothes rumpled. Whoever he was, his behaviour was inappropriate and the stink of alcohol was worse. 

She stepped up and opened her mouth to tell him so, but before he could do more than curl his lip the smaller man, the one that everyone had been clustered round, grabbed the tall man’s arm and dragged him away.

“Fucking hell, take it easy! Chill, man. It’s bad news, the worst....”

Oli’s hands were shaking, and then he was grabbed by Chris’ girlfriend and she was shaking, too. He hugged her, and for a moment it was almost like the past year had never happened; the band hadn’t died and they were still brothers, still close, and nothing could break that. He wasn’t failing as a fledgeling producer, Oli wasn’t a glorified roadie, and Chris wasn’t becoming more desperate by the day. It could still work. They could make it work.

“There was trouble. He got into a bad place, got mixed up with the wrong people. You know that.”

But the next words out of Oli’s mouth killed the dream forever, as far as Long was concerned; his best friend was the driven songwriter, the crazy man who could always find a way to bull through the bad times. Not a guy who tried to make ends meet by reaching back into old habits, bad places he’d left behind, using then dealing then--

“He’s dead, Paul. He got shot and he’s dead--”

The nurse had to bring the tall guy a glass of water. She’d seen wives and girlfriends collapse like that, but it wasn’t so common for a man to just go down in a heap; white faced and shivering he began to keen, and in the end she had to call a doctor. Oli sat in a corner and wept, and Paul sank into a drugged haze to mull over the words. He was dead, and things would never be the same again.

He didn’t attend the funeral.

*

Oli had his head in his hands, and when he looked up the light showed the lines at the corners of his eyes, the deep grooves round his mouth. So much time had passed since they’d last been alive; everything that had come after was just... existence. Chris had found peace, but the two of them still suffered, still hurt. The pain had worked through their bones in different ways, that was all.

“How do you do it?” he asked, and his voice felt rough from disuse. He didn’t speak much, in here. Nobody to talk to, really. Oli wrung one hand across the back of his neck and squinted up, a curl falling across his eyes.

“Do what?”

Paul lit another cigarette, and cocked his head to let the smoke trickle from between his lips. “Live,” he said, and no matter how many years it had been he still recognised the snort of disgust from his friend. Another little cut, another bleed somewhere inside.

“Jesus. What? Are you nuts? I just get on with it - I don’t come over all fucking emo and cut girls up for shits and giggles!”

Two flinches - one from the use of a word from their past, and the other for his crime thrown in his face.

“It wasn’t like that--”

Anger. Oli rarely got angry, but now he was furious and it occurred to Paul that of them all he’d suffered the most, really. He’d watched his closest friends destroy themselves, albeit one much faster than the other.

His fall had taken much, much longer than Chris’ had.

“I’m done with this, Paul. I’m done with you.”

“Oli, don’t--”

“Don’t what? Don’t leave? Don’t live? I hope you fucking fry, Frost, because you’re no friend of mine.”

“Please!”

He’d been half way to the door but that final word stopped him dead. He hunched his shoulders for a second, took a deep breath then let it out, slowly. He glanced back over his shoulder and oh, he looked so old.

“Did they beg, Paul? Did they plead?”

He shook his head, and turned to speak to the guard.

“I’m done here.”

The cries for his old friend to come back rang along the corridors long after they’d dragged him back to his cell, chained him up, hit him a few times to quiet him. They rang in Oli’s head and nagged at him all the way back to the airport, all the way across the Atlantic, all the way home. The screams of the dead haunted him, and he silenced them the only way he knew how.

*

This death had been communicated to him via his attorney. Heart attack. By all accounts, years of low-grade substance abuse had taken their toll, and he’d been found dead in his one-room flat by the police. When they’d been called by a neighbour, to investigate the smell. No friends left. No family to speak of. All alone.

Natural causes.

He gave up, and began to wait for his time to die.

*

_For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost...._

The appeals were finished, the pleading was done. His waiting was over.

_For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost...._

Maybe if they’d stuck with it a little longer. Another year, another six months. Another week. Maybe even another day. If they’d stuck with it, their brotherhood wouldn’t have been shattered and maybe, maybe... or maybe not. 

_And for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy...._

If he’d not stopped playing. If he’d hung on to the outlet for his anger, his passion. The furious churning inside that he’d released on stage, the fire under his fingers. If, if, if. He might not have failed. He might not have spun into such darkness that eventually he had to share it, and show others the blackness inside.

_All for the want of care about a horseshoe nail._

The chains swung cold around his ankles, and last night’s meal sat heavy in his stomach. They would lead him to shuffle down this corridor, enter the room, and he’d see it. The chair would fold him into its chilly embrace, and soon after that he’d be the same as the boys.

He wondered if he’d see them again.

*

_‘...and in other news, Florida State Prison confirmed that Paul Frost - failed musician and record producer with a history of violence - was executed today for a string of murders committed five years ago across Orange County. His defence - that he had been suffering from depression for many years - was rejected by the Court of Appeal, and in the early hours of this morning sentence was carried out....’_


End file.
